Tuesday, February 22, 2005

No Soccer Moms in Saudi

Richard Cohen wrote about the absurd plight of women in Saudi Arabia in the Washington Post today. His reactions are the same as mine when I lived there in late 1990, in the period leading up to the Gulf War. When asked about the time difference in phone calls to Washington, I often responded, "We're eight hours ahead of you and eight centuries behind you." Cohen refers to a rare 1990 protest in this primitive country, when about 50 women took to the streets behind the wheels of cars, protesting because they weren't (and still aren't) allowed to drive cars. I was meeting daily with a Saudi major general who was sort of my counterpart and had become a friend. I asked him the next day what he would have done if one of his wives had been arrested for driving a car in the protest. The general responded that he would have left her in jail to teach her a lesson.